This booklet presents summaries of the proceedings of five workshops held at the U.S. Department of Education that discussed strategies for improving urban schools. The first section contains materials from a workshop on the New Haven School Intervention Project, an elementary school effort designed to aid black and disadvantaged children. In the second section, the search for effective schools is covered. This includes the development of criteria for judging school success and student academic achievement. Section three reviews the workshop on urban schools. Several issues are discussed including program implementation, educational reform, minimum competency requirements, and administrative leadership. The fourth section discusses the teacher expectation workshop's review of two projects, implemented in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which were designed to raise academic achievement by raising teachers' expectations of their students. The final workshop summary outlines issues regarding effective teacher training which would include teacher evaluation and inservice training. (APM)